Fantastic Four #23: Yancy Street Pranks 4

Fantastic Four#23, page 10, panel 2

Written by: Stan Lee

Illustrated by: Jack Kirby

Inked by: George Roussos

Lettered by: S. Rosen

It’s page 10 of this 23-page story, and the plot is only just beginning to get underway. A newspaper reports that a random Maharaja wants to give Johnny a random supercar. In future pages, this random Maharaja will turn out to be one of Doctor Doom’s minions. I really can’t see why this should be turning up nearly halfway through the book. This could be a great inciting incident for the story, the events of the first couple of pages, with Johnny being kidnapped and the mastermind behind it revealed to be Doctor Doom. The recruitment of the minion would then be a two-page flashback, before the rest of the story continues. 23 pages is a lot of space for a story, and with Kirby still cramming 7 or 8 panels onto a page, it quickly becomes clear that the number of pages outweighs the amount of plot.

In the midst of all of this, we see Ben reacting to a Yancy Street prank in an uncustomarily calm manner. Instead of getting angry a breaking some furniture, he appears to be sitting at a writing desk, deciding how best to respond to the letter.